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Text cohesion in children's narrative writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Catherine Ann Cameron ,
Kang Lee ,
Suzanne Webster ,
Kim Munro ,
Anne Kathryn Hunt  and
Murray J. Linton
Catherine Ann Cameron*
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Kang Lee
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Suzanne Webster
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Kim Munro
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Anne Kathryn Hunt
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Murray J. Linton
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
*
Catherine Ann Cameron, Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 6E4
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Abstract

This study employed multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between global writing quality (holistic scores) and lower level analytic measures of writing, with a focus on cohesive indices. The subjects were 9-year-old English-speaking children who participated in either a story free-writing condition or a story rewriting condition. The results showed that both cohesive indices and lower level writing measures (type-token ratios, mean length of utterances in morphemes, composition length, etc.) each accounted for a significant amount of the variance in holistic scores. The story rewriting procedure proved to facilitate the children's writing processes and, hence, resulted in higher quality writing (in terms of both global writing quality and text cohesion) than the story free-writing condition.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 257 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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